Right, this one’s mainly for my musically-minded friends, but any of my other LJ pals are free to opine on this as well.

The Department of Work & Pensions has, for everyone on New Deal (like me), a wee fund of £300 for everyone, for purposes pertaining to helping people find work or improve their chances of getting work. This is usually used by the likes of chavs/neds when they don’t have anything other than Burbery/Kappa/FUBU/whatthefuckever and they have an interview for an office job, so their advisor will use the money to basically sort them out with the means to get a cheap suit from Top Man or whatever.

Now, being that I’m a musician/producer/engineer type fellow, my Music Industry Consultant (laid on in case I chose the New Deal For Musicians option, which I probably willl at some stage) suggests I should think of some way to use that money to further my prospects of musical advancement. Now, he suggested stuff like getting guitar lessons or the like (the dole seem to like training-type things), but bugger that, I can play to a reasonable degree after teaching myself. So I have a few other ideas…

* Arbiter Flats drum kit (learning to play drums could open up my gigging opportunities)
* Tascam digital portastudio thingy (there’s times when I can’t really be arsed plugging all the stuff into my computer only for Cakewalk to go tits up or whatever)
* New guitar for Room 1 usage (my Godin is heavier than Jennifer Lopez’ arse, the DeArmond is a junky guitar for nasty wiry noises, the Yamaha and the Les Paul are Baritone and 7-string respectively, and the other two are bass and accoustic, so a new normally-tuned 6-string would be nice)
* Mics/wee mixing desk? A condenser or two and a lickle Behringer desk with phantom power would be nice…

That’s all that immediately spring to mind…suggestions are most welcome.

The first ‘Woohoo!’ goes to me playing my first gig in 20+ months at the Barfly in Glasgow on Thursday. Went pretty well, even though I had to play with one hand on the first bridge of the last song while I moved the bass player’s mic stand over to sing the chorus. 🙂

Second ‘Woohoo!’ is due to Porcupine Tree announcing their European tour dates for 2005…

I was up in Paisley and Bridge of Weir yesterday, checking out a band a couple of my friends/ex-bandmates are in. I’m producing and engineering their demo EP in January, up at Bush the guitarist’s house out in the middle of nowhere. Should be fun, educational and interesting. Three of the guys in the band were in local up-and-comers Haywire (the fourth Haywireist is now the lead figure in another bunch of local up-and-comers, Tempercalm), but after James left/got kicked out (whatever it was :P), Gerard basically filled the hole and they had a total change of direction, the stuff they’re coming out with doesn’t really sound a lot like Haywire’s pop-punk esque stuff; it’s more Muse meets RHCP meets Ben Folds with shades of The Beatles, David Gray, Lostprophets and gawd knows what else. It’s pretty diverse sounding and I’m really looking forward to spending a week recording these guys and enjoying their company.

Barfly on Thursday. Need to get together with the rest of the guys for a rehersal before then. Gah, I prolly would’ve rehearsed today if an afternoon visit to a rehersal room turned into being part of a dinner party, getting slightly drunk and crashing in Bush’s bedroom. 😛

Come see my debut as new 2nd guitarist for Room 1 upstairs at the Glasgow Barfly on Thursday the 16th as part of a seven-band, two-stage bill (4 bands downstairs, headlined by pop-punkers Captain Everything) and 3 bands upstairs (Room 1, Hoax and Spaceman Lance). TBH, seeing as Spaceman Lance and Hoax are seemingly pop punk/ska bands, we’re a tad out of place (Room 1 sounds more like Nirvana, Black-album-era Metallica and Biffy Clyro in a three-way bumsex orgy), but a gig’s a gig, and it’ll be f’n great to get up and play again regardless of the other bands on the bill’s stylistic incongruity. ^_^

So yeah, upstairs at the Glasgow Barfly on the 16th of December. Be there, or don’t. It’s up to you. 😛